For many products and/or services a customer or subscriber desires that a financial charge for the product/service be satisfied or paid from one or more of accounts, e.g., asset accounts owned by the customer or authorized for the customer's use. The debiting of the appropriate accounts, or reserving of assets in the appropriate accounts, is generally handled by a charging system.
Some contemporary charging systems support shared accounts, e.g., the ability of a same subscriber or customer to use both a personal account and a company account. For example, in some charging systems the subscriber may begin a call with a certain prefix number or the like which serves to select which of plural possible accounts is to be used.
Some charging systems have the ability to check or monitor the identity of the sender or the receiver (e.g., the B-number) and to select either of plural possible accounts accordingly. For example, if the B-number is part of a company listing of numbers, the charge for the call is attributed to the company. But in such case it is not possible to charge calls between two colleagues who are personal friends.